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July One-Shot Adventure Notes
To Do: Outline The setting: You guys are on board a ship designed to sail the Astral Sea, one that is bound for uncharted territory - a tiny island-fragment of the nearest plane has drifted closer to civilization, and for one reason or another you are to check it out. Whether that makes you a mercenary, sailor, or researcher, a colonist or a hermit hoping to make a life there, is up to you. You already know each other, having spent a couple of weeks on board at this point. * Party lands on this island * 3 points of interest on the island that they can explore in any order: ** Tabaxi Village - ** Temple of the Sky-King - ** Necromancer's Lab - * Depending on their actions, the villagers may interact with them one way or another. The necromancer's lair is dangerous and surrounded by zombie dinosaurs, while the temple is sacred to the villagers and they wish to protect it from the outside. * The party has completed the one-shot when they have cleared either the lair or the temple (maybe both?) or met an untimely end. Detailed Background / Setting asdf NPCs Ahlmai, The Tabaxi Village * Shuvra (chief) -- Male -- Big, black-furred tabaxi, with patches of golden-white. Speaks deliberately, and always seems mistrustful of the party. * Alani (priestess) ''-- Female -- Scrawny, wide face, lynx tabaxi. Hooded and robed in primitive drapes, is the priestess of the temple. Suspicious, but quiet. Think Haggar. Druid.'' * Zajar -- Male -- Pleasant, herbalist / farmer / trader, the closest thing this village has to a vendor. Is willing to trade with pretty much anyone, and regularly trades in favors, stories, and other curiosities to the village. Is technically a L2 Transmutation wizard. * Yappa -- Female -- Athletic ranger, defends the village and scouts the island. Knows it better than anyone. Shifty, preserves herself above all else. '' 'Deceased' * Kal-Urdu -- ''Female gnome --'' ''An excitable individual who hated interacting with people, she was a little insane and more than content to work alone in peace. She found the island some 80 years ago, met the Tabaxi, and promptly moved to the far side of the island, where she began experimenting on the wildlife there. She made her home in the expansive underground tunnel system of an ancient Yuan-Ti settlement that she found, and the passages were big enough for her dinosaurs. She was killed by her own creation, the Tyrannosaurus, shortly after she created it. * Ssyath -- Male Yuan-Ti -- The old high priest of the temple on the island, who was left behind as a ghost to watch over it. He guards the path through, and serves as a channel for the power of the demigod whom the temple is dedicated to. He is on good terms with _____, the village priestess. Encounters * (1) A group of Dimorphodons attacks the party, thinking them easy pickings. They are scrawny, starved, and one of them shows signs of the zombie infection. * (2) A small pack of Deinonychus attacks the party, thinking them easy pickings. * (3) The necromancer's pride and joy, a zombie Tyrannosaurus, attacks the party. The Temple of Seth Seth is a god of Life, Death, and Fairness. They are depicted as a cat with eagle's wings and two heads, one looking right and the other looking left. Often these heads are different colors, and represent their dual nature and domain of life and death. The Temple Built on a bit of a cliff almost at the top of the mountain, Seth's temple is a great granite building, imposing and majestic, overgrown with vines yet not claimed by the forest. Large, monolithic stone columns wider than the widest trees you've seen reinforce the walls, which are made of equally large layered blocks. It's difficult to imagine the amount of labor, magical or not, that it must have taken to haul these blocks to the site, but you can't help but be impressed at the architectural feat. The temple approach winds back and forth up the slope. A waterfall begins at the temple's level and free-falls to a large pool a hundred feet below, from which point it turns into a river that cascades down the mountainside past you. At one point not far from the top there is an enormous felled tree that serves as a bridge between two precipices that the waterfall divided centuries ago. The Guards The necromancer that has taken up residence in this temple is paranoid, and has his servants looking for any sort of threat to him. 3-4 Deinonychus raptors will be patrolling the area, and the party will have to defeat them or sneak past them. The Puzzles The party must overcome (2-3) puzzles in order to make it to the central sanctum. * Puzzle Page Rewards The players will not find any monetary reward here, besides the Necromancer's belongings: * 200gp worth of jewels and spell focuses * Old notes, journals, and long-ruined writing utensils that speak of the derivations Kolbra created from the knowledge within the temple * As a reward for completing the challenge, the players will be granted this by the temple itself: The Necromancer, Kolbra Kolbra is a gnome necromancer that came to this island long ago. Wary of the tabaxi inhabitants, he found the temple and began to learn from it. Once he learned all he could from the sacred rituals inscribed within the temple, Kolbra perverted them using his own knowledge of the arcane to create undead thralls for himself. He was cursed for his intrusion, and now resides deep within the temple, hunted by his magnum opus, the Tyrannosaur. He will not be hostile towards the party, but he must die in order to return the zombies to their death. (This does not happen immediately upon his death.) The necromancer is holed up in his lab. The temple sealed him inside, and he has been there, cursed with unlife in retribution for the undeath he has caused. He has a stegosaurus guard inside with him, and a dimorphodon as well. The dimorphodon is his familiar, and cannot attack. The dimorphodon carries news and orders back and forth from the scouting Deinonychus, when the necromancer summons it on the other side of the wall. A chink in the stonework allows the necromancer to see a tiny bit of sky, and determine whether it is night or day. * "You find yourself in a large room, about 60ft x 40ft, that is almost completely dark save for a torch in the wall that has a blueish flame burning there. No windows or exits can be seen in the room, and there are several pieces of furniture made crudely out of logs and lashed bamboo. Aside from this, you get three other impressions right off the bat. First, there is a stench on the air, which smells like the slums in a town that has no bath house, mixed with the stink of a long-dead and decaying carcass. The second is that through the stone walls, you can hear quite close the eternal rumble and rush of the waterfall you saw coming in. The third is the large, lumbering shape in the center of the room that turns sightless eyes towards you. A little squeak that could be a mouse or a child is heard echoing from the back of the room, and then a voice says 'Defend me, help! Stay away!'. At this the creature moves in your direction, tail swinging dangerously." * Encounter Page When the party reaches the room, Kolbra will be hiding and his stegosaurus will attack. If they call out to him, he will listen. He wants to escape the temple as best he can. Set a sand timer. If they are interacting with him for more than 15 minutes (be that talking or fighting), then (on Initiative 20) the Tyrannosaurus will burst in through the wall, proceed to devour him whole, and then turn on the party / the stegosaurus. It wants smaller prey, so the party would have to try really hard to get it not to go for them. This may devolve into a chase. The hole that the Tyrannosaurus comes through leads directly to the waterfall, so the party can escape that way (ideal). They can also run through the temple, which may result in the Tyrannosaur chasing them. Improv??? The tyrannosaur is actively aging as it fights, so the party has about 1-2 minutes before they are safe from it - they just have to survive those minutes. Category:Notes